History of the Rigby Star

History of the Rigby Star

I worked for The Rigby Star from mid-1956 until the fall of 1959, when I went away to college. It had been owned for several years by the Jones family — the descendants of two brothers, who were deceased when I went to work there. The editor and publisher was one of the grande dames of Idaho journalism, Hope Bennett Jones, the widow of one of the those brothers. She wrote a weekly column entitled "Here and There," and she was as good a columnist in that little town as Herb Caen was in San Francisco. She was feared as much as she was admired. She was a great and good woman and I loved her. One of my daughters, Ann Hope Doud Hernandez, shares her name. Hope's daughter, Jane Ann, went to Idaho State, got married, and probably sold the paper after Hope died. The other side of the family was represented by two brothers, Lawrence and Lyndon, who were the printers. They were all good Mormons and solid people, pillars of their community who left the town a better place because they lived and practiced local journalism there.